Who are the faces of October?
Last week we introduced you to Claire, Lead Connect at October. This week for our new series of “Faces of October”, we continue with the portraits of two managers of our company: Camille David, Head of Customer Success and Julien Guepin, Chief Technology Officer.
Camille David, Head of Customer Success
What do you do at October?
I am in charge of the Customer Success team. We are a team of 5 people, based in all countries where October is active, and our mission is to build a lasting and valuable relationship with our 25,000 active retail lenders.
What did you do before joining October?
I joined October as Customer Success Manager for the Spanish market right after finishing my studies, in 2017. I studied in a French business school, but I did half of my Master in Spain before spending a semester in Canada. I took a gap year to do some internships in the financial and tech sectors. So, it’s quite naturally that I became interested in the Fintech sector, and it’s when October caught my attention.
What aspect of your work are you most passionate about?
I love the fact that it is a broad job, which enables you to work with many teams and learn every day. We work with Product and Tech to improve the customer journey but also with Marketing on communication actions and with Ops on recovery and compliance topics. I also enjoy seeing the concrete impact our work has on lenders and receive their feedback.
What are the 3 skills that you definitely need in your role?
I think one of the most important asset for this job is to have interpersonal skills to bring support to lenders and engage them, manage the Customer Success team and work on cross-team projects. In this role, you also need to be versatile, as you switch from one topic to the other, and to enjoy working with digital tools as we use them on a daily basis to optimise efficiency.
What does diversity and inclusion mean to you?
For me, diversity and inclusion mean evolving in an environment made of people from different backgrounds and cultures that one can learn from, and in which there is no difference in the treatment each person receives.
What was your first touchpoint with the digital world?
My work experiences were closely related to the digital world. Before entering October, I did an internship at a startup company that was developing a data platform for IT executives and I also worked for AXA Tech, which provides information systems and IT services to the AXA group. Now, at October, I keep developing my knowledge about technology.
How do you think technology will impact the industry in the next years?
Thanks to technology, I think it will be possible to further simplify and democratise the financial sector, making it easy and understandable for all. At October, we will keep leveraging technology to make entrepreneurs’ life easier and guide them efficiently towards the source of financing that best suits them, whether it comes from retail or institutional lenders.
What do you do in your spare time?
When I am not spending time with friends or family, I enjoy travelling and hiking, but since the opportunity to travel has been reduced lately, I am discovering Madrid’s natural parks. I also like cooking and watching series – I am a big fan of Big Bang Theory.
What kind of job would you do if you were not in Fintech?
It’s quite far away from Fintech and the business world, but my dream job when I was a kid was to be a nurse, so I would give it a try!
Julien Guepin, Chief Technology Officer
What do you do at October?
I am CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at October, in charge of building a great Tech team to deliver the best product possible to our customers: create applications and tools for lenders, borrowers, partners, and the October team, while keeping a high level of stability and security.
We are 12 software developers based in France, split in two “squads”, releasing product improvements every 3 weeks. We try to follow the coding best practices (testing, code reviews, …) to ensure a good level of quality.
What did you do before joining October?
I was Lead Developer in a startup called Jolicloud, building a unified platform to access all your online resources (Instagram, Google Photos, Dropbox, YouTube, …). After 2 years I had the opportunity to join October early, before the platform was launched, as a Backend Developer.
What aspect of your work are you most passionate about?
My biggest pleasure is releasing a new product or feature to users, seeing it used, improving part of the user experience. At October we have a high variety of users and features so there always is opportunities to work on new things and learn.
What are the 3 skills that you definitely need in your role?
- problem solving, to divide big technical problems into small parts we can conquer.
- calm, to handle issues or problems that will happen on our applications or within the team.
- curiosity, because Tech is changing everyday and we have to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies.
What does diversity and inclusion mean to you?
We try to build a Tech team with diverse backgrounds to create and learn from all our various experiences and points of view. A good Tech architecture needs debates.
What was your first touchpoint with the digital world?
I learned HTML, CSS, PHP in high-school to build a website for a local association, and got addicted to programming. Then I could learn how to become a software developer in an engineering school.
How do you think technology will impact the industry in the next years?
The focus on building great user experience and interfaces is still new to the Finance world, there are still lots of finance services to be simplified.
What do you do in your spare time?
Outside of pandemic periods, I enjoy attending jazz & rock concerts, learning about art in exhibitions, discovering new food in restaurants, new cultures by traveling the world.
For the past year, I have been learning to play guitar, I started biking during weekends and bikepacking or hiking for holidays, which is a new way for me to discover the beauty of France.
What kind of job would you do if you were not in Fintech?
One of my dream jobs would be food tasting for a travel guide. In the Tech world I’d like to work for the music or travel industry someday. But Fintech learned me that any industry can be fascinating.